COFFEE SHOP TALKS

The monthly meetings of the Chicago Southland Network of SCBWI-Illinois are held on the 2nd Thursday of each month in the cafe of the Barnes & Noble in Orland Park, Illinois. For members'convenience, two meetings are held on that day: 9 am and 7 pm. Feel free to attend the one that suits your schedule.

SUBMITTING YOUR WORK

Here are a few websites and blogs I've run across recently that talk about cover letters, query letters, and submitting your work:

"Rites of Submission: Cover Letters and Query Letters"
Jacqueline K. Ogburn, Harold's Purple Crayon
http://www.underdown.org/covlettr.htm

• Includes samples of a bad letter and a good one

"From Keyboard to Printed Page: Facts You Need to Know"
Society of Children's Book Writers & Illustrators
www.scbwi.org

• Members will need to log on, click section "For Our Members," and select "Publishing Resources" to access this article.

"To Staple or Not to Staple, and Other Manuscript Format Issues"

Harold Underdown, The Purple Crayon Blog
http://www.underdown.org/blog_1005.htm#staple

"A Crash Course in Submitting a Manuscript"
Laura Backes, Write4Kids.com
http://www.write101.com/chcrash.htm

"10 FAQs About Children's Book Publishing"
Robin Michal Koontz, SCBWI-Illinois
http://www.scbwi-illinois.org/FAQ.html

"Alice's CWIM Blog: Not-Quite-Daily News and Musings from the Editor of Children's Writer's & Illustrator's Market"
Alice Pope
http://cwim.blogspot.com/

Jan Fields, Institute of Children's Literature:
"Cover Letters Made S-S-Simple"
http://www.institutechildrenslit.com/rx/ws08/simplecover.shtml
"Postage-Free Submissions" (on email submissions)
http://www.institutechildrenslit.com/rx/ws04/postage.shtml
"Crafting Clever Queries"
http://www.institutechildrenslit.com/rx/ws07/cleverqueries.shtml

Books & Blogs for Writers

Books
--ESCAPING INTO THE OPEN, Elizabeth Berg
--ON WRITING, Stephen King
--BIRD BY BIRD, Anne Lamont
--THE FOREST FOR THE TREES, Betsy Lerner
--READING LIKE A WRITER, A GUIDE FOR PEOPLE WHO LOVE BOOKS AND FOR THOSE WHO WANT TO WRITE THEM, Francine Prose
--TIME MANAGEMENT FOR CREATIVE PEOPLE, Lee Silber

Blogs
--KAT'S EYE, Kim Winters http://kimwinters.blogspot.com
--THREE SILLY CHICKS, Carolyn Crimi, Julia Durango, Andrea Beatty http://threesillychicks.blogspot.com